Care to enlighten me? It's not like I stated any of that as fact, it was qualified with an admission of my own ignorance- I'm open to being corrected. Or are you just demonstrating what happens when established dogma is questioned in this field? If so point taken, I can see why they're having problems
I think there's a common pattern on Hacker News that goes something like:
A: Overly broad generalization of a huge body of work put together over 100 years by tens of thousands of professionals
B: Ugh, hate this take from armchair experts
A: Okay, then give me all the examples! Otherwise you're proving me right!
I happen to think your overly broad generalization is more right than wrong, but I also recognize the silliness of asking to be "enlightened" on an entire branch of human endeavor via internet comments. This is a problematic argument form, and someone calling out this behavior does not prove you right.
So let's be clear about what "enlightening you" means. If your argument is "psychology is based on a fundamentally flawed/useless study design (surveys) and we can never learn anything real from it", then a few examples of reproducible, interesting, not a-priori obvious results from surveys should be sufficient to show that we actually can learn real things from surveys. (And be careful not to fall into the "I could have told you that!" fallacy.) Luckily, this question was already asked on Reddit, and I think there are some strong examples:
On the other hand, the field is absolutely rife with problematic study design and even some entire psychology departments (e.g. Stanford) seem to be completely rotten. The most salient example of this is the "implicit bias" studies that came out of Stanford. Their study design was something like:
Task 1: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes as fast as you can
Task 2: Associate bad words with "foreign" themes
Task 3: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes again
Task 4: Associate good words with "foreign" themes
And the result is: you're racist because Task 4 takes you a few milliseconds longer. It never occurred to them (or it did and they intentionally forced the result) that in Task 4, you're literally unlearning what you've just practiced 3 times. It was one of the most blatantly bad studies I've ever seen in my life and I didn't see anyone else calling out how problematic it was, because Stanford.
So in general I actually agree with your take: the field is rife with junk science, some of it obvious, and almost certainly some of it intentional. But please also recognize that "I'm an expert in tech and therefore everything, and if you can't prove me wrong in an internet comment then that proves me right!" is a very problematic argument style. It sounds like you're trying to prove yourself right, and a much more efficient way to get smarter is to habitually try to prove yourself wrong.
dartos|1 year ago
Why go out of your way to gatekeep random internet comments?
mrguyorama|1 year ago
So many people will blindly walk forward in the dark, completely in ignorance, and then get upset that people ask them to light a candle first.
cheeseomlit|1 year ago
DinoDad13|1 year ago
feoren|1 year ago
A: Overly broad generalization of a huge body of work put together over 100 years by tens of thousands of professionals
B: Ugh, hate this take from armchair experts
A: Okay, then give me all the examples! Otherwise you're proving me right!
I happen to think your overly broad generalization is more right than wrong, but I also recognize the silliness of asking to be "enlightened" on an entire branch of human endeavor via internet comments. This is a problematic argument form, and someone calling out this behavior does not prove you right.
So let's be clear about what "enlightening you" means. If your argument is "psychology is based on a fundamentally flawed/useless study design (surveys) and we can never learn anything real from it", then a few examples of reproducible, interesting, not a-priori obvious results from surveys should be sufficient to show that we actually can learn real things from surveys. (And be careful not to fall into the "I could have told you that!" fallacy.) Luckily, this question was already asked on Reddit, and I think there are some strong examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/qktt6h/...
On the other hand, the field is absolutely rife with problematic study design and even some entire psychology departments (e.g. Stanford) seem to be completely rotten. The most salient example of this is the "implicit bias" studies that came out of Stanford. Their study design was something like:
Task 1: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes as fast as you can
Task 2: Associate bad words with "foreign" themes
Task 3: Associate good words with white/Christian/American themes again
Task 4: Associate good words with "foreign" themes
And the result is: you're racist because Task 4 takes you a few milliseconds longer. It never occurred to them (or it did and they intentionally forced the result) that in Task 4, you're literally unlearning what you've just practiced 3 times. It was one of the most blatantly bad studies I've ever seen in my life and I didn't see anyone else calling out how problematic it was, because Stanford.
So in general I actually agree with your take: the field is rife with junk science, some of it obvious, and almost certainly some of it intentional. But please also recognize that "I'm an expert in tech and therefore everything, and if you can't prove me wrong in an internet comment then that proves me right!" is a very problematic argument style. It sounds like you're trying to prove yourself right, and a much more efficient way to get smarter is to habitually try to prove yourself wrong.